Closer Look at 19" Monitor Features. Part IV.. Page 13

We continue the good tradition of testing 19-inch LCD monitors. Today we are going to introduce to you 15 models from Acer, ASUS, BenQ, EIZO, NEC, Philips, Samsung and Viewsonic. We will look at a few widescreen models and discuss the monitors’ response time and RTC errors for all RTC-enabled monitors. Read more in our detailed roundup now!

The monitor’s menu has got much better since NEC’s older models, but hasn’t acquired any additional functionality (I already checked it out in my tests of the LCD2070NX). The menu is quite easy to use.

The monitor’s brightness and contrast are set at 100% and 50% by default. On analog connection, 100-nit brightness of white is achieved by choosing 30% brightness and 38% contrast. Brightness is controlled through pulse-width modulation of the power of the backlight lamps at 210Hz frequency.

Color gradients are reproduced by this monitor without serious defects. The backlighting is overall uniform, but with brighter areas in the corners (you can only see that in the dark, though). Like with any TN+Film matrix, the vertical viewing angles are rather too narrow and this cannot be improved even by the glossy coating.

The gamma curves look good, except for the minor bend in the top right of the graph (it’s most clearly seen with the red curve). It means that the monitor has a little too much of contrast. And really, if you lower the monitor’s contrast setting from 50% to at least 45%, this color reproduction defect is completely cured.

The gamma curves look excellent now and do not get any worse if you reduce the contrast setting more. So, it is best to keep this monitor’s contrast at 45-47%. By the way, this is a common thing for many NEC monitors I have dealt with in my earlier tests – the default contrast was a little higher than necessary in quite a number of them.

The color temperature is set up quite accurately, making allowances for this model’s gaming orientation. The “warm” modes (sRGB and warmer) yield a considerably lower temperature than necessary, but the difference between the temperatures of white and gray is small, and it is this difference that is indicative of the quality of setup. What’s not good here is that the monitor lacks a mode with a color temperature of 6500-7000K: the “7000K” mode is in fact colder than this, while the “sRGB” mode (in which the temperature is supposed to be 6500K) is warmer.

The response time graph doesn’t differ from other typical TN matrixes without response time compensation: it has a maximum of about 30 milliseconds and a minimum of 11 milliseconds (on black-white transitions).

The monitor has a very high maximum brightness and an excellent contrast ratio, too – for this type of the LCD matrix, of course. I think there’s even some excess of brightness because 300 nits is enough for you to work comfortably even when sunlight hits the screen directly. Well, having good specs helps sell a product after all.

All in all, the LCD1970GX is a very good monitor in its class if you do not care that its RTC-less matrix is now out-dated. It features an accurate setup, good contrast and brightness, and a nice exterior design. Like I said above, the 1970GX is going to give way to the new 90GX2 which is the subject of the next section of this review.